I've just read The Coelura, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It has all the features I like in the Pern books I've read -- the description of a "strange new world, new life and new civilization", all those things Star Trek promises and too often fails to deliver. As usual, when I'd finished the book I wanted to know more about these people.

I notice that in Cheryl's list of the other books that Nimisha's Ship is grouped with The Coelura. Do any of the characters from The Coelura appear in Nimisha's Ship or are they just set in the same universe?

The 2 books are ostensibly set in the same series, yes, but no characters appear in both books. The only way that I can see they are related (having not read The Coelura for a long long time now) is that Nimisha mentions having a Coelura weaving being given to her.

Gidget is correct. The two books are set in the same universe with body-heirs and tattos for the ultra-rich, and coelura weavings are mentioned in Nimisha's Ship -- but otherwise nothing crosses over between the two of them.

Nimisha's Ship is a good read on it's own, and you will learn more about the cultural/societal practices around body heirs and their tattoos from the book.

I just finished the Coelura, about two weeks ago, and I was very suprised that there were not more of these related stories. The Coelura was such a short story to be so packed with action, and intruge. I am going to read Nimisha's Ship, next. I loved the drawing that were in my little copy. And the photo of Anne is the best in my opinion, that was on her book covers.

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"To the Horsehead Nebula and back we shall make beautiful music"..."Together!"

The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression,and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cut out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived........Howard Pyle

I too like the artwork in the book. Some people don't care for it, but I think it was great to see all the descriptions come to life. My favorite picture for The Coelura is the Book Club dust jacket. I love that picture!

I just finished this book. I believe I found a copy of the first illustrated edition. I have to say, I love the size of the hardcover, the size of the font, the pacing of the pictures and the fact that it's a shorter story. It made for a nice in-one-day read. As a big comic art fan, which somewhat applies here, I think the artist did a marvelous job most of the time. Some of the ones that incorporated text came across as dated, but I didn't mind that. I really liked the jacket for it too, it felt very fairy tale-ish and that'll lead me to the content.

This was a wonderful merging of a sci-fi concept with a fantasy fairy tale. I really enjoyed the hunting society and the body-heir contracts. That was a very cool dynamic. The heart of the improbable romance was a little cheesy and definitely felt late 70s early 80s in writing, but if I didn't like that, I wouldn't be reading these books, would I? I think as a character, Caissa felt very similar to Sara from Restoree, being flung into situations beyond her understanding or control, yet inadvertantly being part of the solutions through her romance.